MASON, Ohio – A wild pitch spiked in the dirt ended a dramatic 10th-inning finish to the Great Midwest Athletic Conference Baseball Championship at Prasco Park as No. 3 seed Kentucky Wesleyan won it all on Saturday.
With the bases loaded and one out in extras, KWC’s Nathan Stemle dashed towards the plate as a Roscoe Blackburn offering skipped to the backstop and ricocheted off the brick.
Stemle slid underneath the tag and his teammates came streaming out of the dugout to celebrate the program’s first Great Midwest baseball trophy with a mob at home plate. With the conference title in hand, KWC officially punched its ticket to the NCAA Championship Midwest Regional with an automatic-qualifying selection.
The NCAA Division II Selection Show will be aired on Sunday night at 10 p.m. EDT as the regional brackets are unveiled.
KWC head coach Todd Lillpop, calm and collected until the very end, was eventually chased down by his players for the ceremonial ice water dump. He was glowing radiantly about his team’s unblemished 4-0 run through the Great Midwest postseason.
“It’s all about our guys,” Lillpop said afterwards. “Our players have bought into everything we’ve talked about all year. And we’ve talked all week about being composed. It doesn’t matter what happened throughout a game, it’s about composure. And we’ve got 10 seniors and a bunch of other guys on this team; everybody played a part in this.”
“This is for everybody back home,” he continued. “This is for all of our alums that have been here this week and for every baseball player that’s strapped on this uniform. It’s for all those guys.”
As the conference tournament runner-up, the Pioneers threatened to push towards the ‘if necessary’ game after successfully executing two more suicide squeeze plays, including to tie the game in the top of the ninth inning.
Malone’s journey to Saturday was incredible with three wins in the consolation portion of the bracket and freshman starting pitcher Kyle Kovach gave his team a chance to win while dueling against KWC’s Sammy Holder.
It was a rematch of Koavch against Holder from April 9, a 14-1 Malone win in the prior meeting. But Holder, the 2015 G-MAC Freshman of the Year, worked with poise and scattered just five hits through 6.2 innings.
Sophomore Ryan Hundley, who threw almost 140 pitches and 9.1 innings against Alderson Broaddus to begin the postseason, closed it out with 3.1 innings in relief for the winning decision.
“They (Sammy and Ryan) showed a lot of heart and poise,” Lillpop said. “Our players and our staff have worked extremely hard for this moment.”
Moments That Mattered
There were so many.
Malone’s Nate Cobb robbed KWC’s Joseph Burke on a sinking line drive that ended the bottom of the ninth inning. Cobb was fully extended going towards the ground and created another web gem for his collection.
Cobb’s defensive play stranded Josh Galvan at third, who began the inning with a ringing triple to deep right that smashed off the brick wall and into the field of play.
KWC’s Jacob Snodgrass made a highlight-reel worthy catch of his own in left field in visitor’s half of the 10th inning. Snodgrass went into a full slide to pluck the ball out of the air and get a key second out of the inning.
Malone opted to walk No. 2 hitter Seth Campbell in the 10th inning, a potential head-scratching move to the casual observer. But in essence, the Pioneers were taking away KWC’s best chance at a successful squeeze play after Malone had done it twice and once more to beat No. 1 seed Trevecca Nazarene Friday night.
The fact that Malone would rather take its chances with the bases loaded with Galvan, who was due up next, made for intriguing speculation as it all unfolded.
KWC’s Andrew Kirkland put the Panthers in prime position to close it out with a ringing RBI double on the first pitch he saw of his at-bat in the seventh inning. Campbell would score all the way from first on the play.
The Panthers capitalized on two bases-loaded walks in the fifth inning, one drawn by Kirkland and the other by senior Adam Brown.
G-MAC Player of the Year Keanan Locke doubled twice and was 3-for-5 and finished his season with a league-leading 53 RBI.